


like blackstrap molasses

by kuro49



Series: 200 subs promptathon of 2020 [12]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Implied Blood and Torture (of Joker), M/M, Mentions of past underage sex, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23039635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: All of their past track records considered, Slade does right by the Robin that comes back from the dead.Or, the one where he doesn't fuck him.
Relationships: Bruce Wayne/Slade Wilson, Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne, Jason Todd/Slade Wilson
Series: 200 subs promptathon of 2020 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622572
Comments: 11
Kudos: 171





	like blackstrap molasses

**Author's Note:**

> it is technically a future fic of the series but the tone is so completely different that i almost consider not adding it to the series at all given this has none of the porn and a shit ton of ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ the original prompt from anon was this: continuation of your tastes like something sweet trio but with older!Jay either after reconciliation or after B confirms it's Jay. 
> 
> i'm so sorry anon, this is probably not at all what you asked for but even i never know what i get out of myself when i sit down with a prompt.

Slade nearly turns the man away when he shows up for a third night in a row. 

Purpling bruises underneath his eyes, lips cracked and split with dried blood, nose still swollen from when he broke it on Slade's fist that very first night, shiner looking progressively worse than when he saw him last. Barely twelve hours ago. 

"I'm not fucking you when you're like this." Slade tells him, point blank. 

"I can fuck you then." Bruce replies, easily, pushing into the room with barely a second glance at him.

Slade Wilson doesn't pity him, long since worked past _that_ particular emotion. He is not angry either, worked through all of that too when he takes seven separate contracts within the vicinity of Gotham and finishes every last job with a big splattering mess while the Bat is forced to clean up in the wake of a freshly dug grave for a son he never could treat as one.

"I'm not here so you can get me to fuck you until you pass out, Wayne." 

Bruce turns to him without flinching. "Then why are you still in Gotham?"

Slade has no answer to that.

So he slams Bruce up against the wall of the fancy hotel penthouse like the man has been asking for. They smash a nice vase, knock a frame to the floor, break a glass table into a thousand jagged shards. The curtains come ripping down the rod when Bruce reaches out for something to hold on to. The headboard splinters when Slade grips it beneath his hands. The whole thing creaks louder than any noises they can make when they finally make it on to the bed itself.

There is a long list of collateral damage.

Bruce's throat is outlined in a livid chokehold while Slade's neck is an imprinted map of teeth and scratches even with his accelerated healing.

When Slade lets Bruce fuck him without any prep at all, the two of them look at each other like this is what they deserve after all. The sweat dripping from Bruce's temples look like they could be tears, the grunts being fucked out of Slade could be heard as anything other than pleasurable. Their kisses are hard, borderline the notion of tearing each other apart when every single press of their mouths is laced in fresh blood like they are looking to take a pound of flesh. 

Bruce has the saddest eyes. And Slade, he finds himself realizing that he isn't unnecessarily cruel.

It would probably be kinder if they were able to drown in it, but the world they are in is anything but kind.

Slade only tastes Bruce's despair flood his mouth like a particularly disgusting poison. He swallows viciously hard.

He leaves Bruce Wayne passed out in the hotel bed with deep tissue bruising on top of all the scars, the sheets pooling beneath him spotted in a darkening red. The rest of the room looks like a hurricane went through it with barely a second glance. It is fitting given its resemblance to the way he's felt since the second Robin was laid to rest. There is no peace here. 

Deathstroke isn't seen in Gotham for years to come.

When Talia's voice comes over the line, Slade knows this is not a courtesy call.

He gives her a set of coordinates, and shows up three days before schedule to stock up a safehouse he hasn't stepped foot inside of almost eight months now. He is expecting a him, but he wasn’t expecting _him_. When Deathstroke opens his door, he finds a kid who used to pull off the colours of traffic lights pretty fucking well. 

“It’s been a while, Slade.”

Except that kid died something horrific.

“Lil’bird.”

He wasn't at Jason Todd's funeral three years ago and it had nothing to do with the fact that he didn't receive an invitation in the mail. 

“Not so little anymore but I guess the principle's all the same." Jason strides in without an invitation, drops his duffle bag down by the door like he’s daring Slade to kick him out. "Doubt I'll ever grow to get as big as you though."

Slade looks at a boy who was brutalized then murdered only to stand still in the middle of his Montana safehouse on the request of one Talia al Ghul.

Stranger things have come crawling out of the woodwork of Gotham, this Robin might still be the strangest one yet when Slade knows it is Batman who buried what was left of the tattered body dug out of the ruins in Ethiopia. If he tries to recollect any of it, he thinks he could still feel the grit of dirt beneath Bruce Wayne's fingernails as they dig into his hips.

The boy's taller now, eyes gleaming despite the dark shadows underneath them, a scowl etched across the pull of his mouth, all the muscles in his body coiling taut as though he’s ready for a fight that isn't about to come from Slade himself. Instead, Slade barks out a laugh, and there is an edge of disbelief to it but he has seen more than his share of fucked up things.

"Nah, kid."

"So, what's it? You're mad that you couldn't get rid of me for good?" 

Slade laughs again, he's got to, shaking his head a little too, like this is all a joke made in very poor taste. But then again, the dead don't usually stroll through the front door with this much presence. The windows aren't rattling, the curtains aren't fluttering in the air tight room. Ghosts never come kindly to men like him. It's strange that Jason isn't fading around the edges, or that his feet are planted on to solid ground.

"Just mad you didn't come and visit me sooner, kiddo."

Jason's eyes flash a shocking green, and that is definitely new. Gone are those baby blues that can get Slade doing anything he asked or begged or let out on a breathy moan. 

It is Jason's turn, and his laughter is not the same sweet thing Slade's heard before. It is loud and sharp, ragged and mean and hollowed out. It is feral as he tosses his head back, motion exaggerated as it comes tearing out like it is being physically cut out of him with a serrated knife.

When Jason finally stops, he looks breathless in all the wrong ways, looking Slade dead in the eye. 

"Don't suppose you'll still want to fuck me? Now that I'm a bit bigger than what I used to be." His words are not cruel but they do not mean well, crass along every edge. Hip cocked to the side, mouth twisting crooked. “Got nothing to say to me?” 

There is nothing reminiscent of the little Robin that he used to be. And to Slade's own surprise, he is fine with that too.

When Slade finally answers, it is with a half-smile and a shrug: "Figured you wouldn't appreciate it if I jerked off all over your grave." 

In the duration of what Deathstroke is being paid to do, Jason never climbs into his bed and Slade never invites him into his. 

It might just be the only righteous thing they have ever done when it comes to one another.

Instead, Slade puts Jason through the paces of training. He teaches him hand to hand combat, beyond what Jason already knows, makes him bodily understand the efficiency in brutality, in putting a grown man to the ground in just a few simple moves that keep him there. Slade leaves bruises all over the boy, and calls them a lesson in and of themselves. When Slade puts a handgun in the center of Jason's palm, he shows him how to brace for the recoil, and watches Jason pull the trigger over and over and all over again until he empties an entire clip into one single target.

All of it leaves the kid passing out every single night from sheer exhaustion before his head can even hit the pillow in the cot tucked into the corner of a spare room inside of the safehouse, the rest of his body following in one long painful groan.

It is at breakfast in the middle of the sixth week that Slade tells him, "I've got a job."

Jason swallows his bite of scrambled eggs. And it isn't the lack of reaction or the silence he gets in response, it is the knowledge that the kid never used to keep quiet quite like this.

"It'll be quick, and I'll even bring you back something."

Jason snorts, ducking his head down and shovels another spoonful into his mouth in the face of Slade's placating attempts to make his departure sting less. It's almost laughable when the kid doesn't even bother with a retort, just keeps eating until he clears his plate. Jason only lets out a grunt of acknowledgment when Slade hands him a training regime that's been adapted to the improvements he's shown within these last few days.

Things get blurry after that.

Slade keeps an eye out because he knows Jason doesn't lose time. Instead, he loses something else. It happened before his death, it happened during it, and it is happening now, magnified by ten folds with a dip in the Lazarus Pit.

Jason hears the door to the safehouse open first. And then he is smelling blood.

It is all a physiological reaction when his nostrils flare, eyes narrow, hands tighten into fists at his sides until his knuckles are bone white with force. It all makes his skin prickle when the stench is so strong. When Jason walks out into the main room, he comes face to face with the Bat of Gotham in this tiny place nearly thirty miles outside of Copper Cliff.

A breath drawn, a breath exhaled, and.

"I'll gut you like a _fucking_ pig." Jason brings a gun up and leveled, pulls the safety off, and he is unflinching when he aims it at the Bat. But Slade knows his scathing words are directed just at him.

"Got you that present I promised." He says from behind Bruce. "So, put that toy down already." 

"Why do you think I wanted this at all?" The edge of a loose thread, and it is all unraveling at the seams. This is not how any of Jason's plan was supposed to go. And Slade knows this. 

"Not talking about Batman, kid. Focus on me, I'm talking about _this_."

It's a loud dull thud when he puts it down on the rickety kitchen table. Blood oozes out of the bottom of the black duffle bag as he pushes it closer to where Jason stands. None of them really need to look to know. Slade doesn't doubt the devastation in the aftermath if he doesn't make the first move. So he reaches out, pulling the zipper open to reveal the contents. And the smell only gets worse.

Green eyes burning near neon, lips pulling thin and bloodless as he bares his teeth at them both to bite out: " _He_ was supposed to do it." And Jason is past rage itself.

"What makes you think he didn't?" Slade asks calmly, like Joker's fucking decapitated head isn't sitting on top of the dining table.

"Say it." Jason is visibly shaking now. "Say you did it for me."

Bruce draws his cowl off, and then his gauntlets, and there is something deeply paralyzing in the way the reveal is made.

When Bruce turns his hands over, blood marks the crevices of his palms to say: "I made the killing blow."

  
  
  


Batman wakes up in a cell he knows the exact dimensions to.

Arkham Asylum doesn't change even if it probably should. When Deathstroke steps out on the other side of the bars to the cell, he greets him like an old friend: "Been a while, Bats." 

Batman snaps his head in Deathstroke's direction at breakneck speed. It is all wrong for them to meet like this, and here too. They do not see the white of each other's eyes, and maybe that is for the best when this is a path they didn't ever think they will go down. Slade doesn't do ultimatums. And this isn't one. This is him correcting a course of action that should have been done before Batman ever adopted a single child out of some misguided attempt to be anyone's saviour.

Deathstroke turns a tablet to the Bat behind bars.

He shows him a live stream of a safehouse sub-basement. Even in black and white and just a little bit grainy, it is clear who is standing in the middle of the room beating up a punching bag until his knuckles are raw. Slade doesn't need to put a gun to Bruce's head. 

"You end the clown, and I don't run with him."

" _Him_." Batman echoes back at him, and there is something that sounds a lot like he's stunned.

Strip away the Kevlar and the Bat shaped suit, and he is just a man. Bruce Wayne hasn't stopped bleeding in a long, long time.

"Yeah, Bats. It's him."

Slade doesn't just throw a wrench into Jason's plan, he sets all of it on fire until everything comes down in ashes.

It's the muffled cackling of an unhinged maniac as Slade drags him out into the open. A thick strip of black cloth as a makeshift blindfold, another tightened around the mouth soaked in spit and blood. There is red trickling from both of his ears, and a drying trail from his broken nose. Joker leaves a smear of near black blood.

When Slade opens the door to Bruce's cell to toss Joker inside, he also pulls the sword from his back and tosses it to Bruce, letting it skid loudly across the concrete floor until it rests by his boots. Bruce doesn't have to examine the multiple puncture wounds to Joker's gut. It is all the making of a slow but certain death. Neither one of them are under any delusion. Joker is beyond saving. But that has always been the point to be made.

One giant bonfire with the heat to match. Slade sets it all ablaze. 

This is Slade giving Bruce the easy way out. This is also him choosing the kinder path even as Jason becomes livid if he ever learns the truth. 

"If nothing else," Slade tells Bruce, tone icy, tasting that same poison at the tip of his tongue, "you can put him out of his misery."

Because Slade never wants his lil'bird to see the hesitation before the final blow.

**Author's Note:**

> this is such a useless fact but it is everything i care about for all the wrong reasons: Blackstrap molasses is the result of the third boiling of the sugar cane syrup, it is dark and viscous and known for being significantly more bitter than regular molasses.


End file.
